Council Gives Real Estate Developers Vote of Confidence

 Council Majority Votes to Support YIMBY's Plan Over City's General Plan

Red Carpet to be Rolled Out For Developers

In a remarkable show of fraternity with corporate real estate interests, the Emeryville City Council majority voted to support the hand over of California cities’s autonomous public housing policies to private developers Tuesday night.  The voting (4-1 Priforce dissenting) puts the City’s imprimatur squarely in the ‘hands off’ developers camp with its nod to near total deregulation of municipality's housing policy for the benefit of market forces.  The vote shows a Council hostile to Emeryville's General Plan and a predilection to disallow Emeryville's residents a say so as the guiding principle for its housing policy in the future.

The new housing polity was forwarded in a series of affirmative votes, officially conjoining Emeryville with developer’s wishes, each in the same 4-1 fashion; a roll back of State planning protections for residents (AB 1307), a lowering citizen’s threshold vote from 2/3rds to 55% for development projects that would cost taxpayers money on infrastructure  (ACA 1) and a bill that broadly deregulates the approval process for local municipalities, including a roll back of affordable housing construction regulation (SB 423). 

Mayor John Bauters
Emeryville's laws protecting 
housing must be "streamlined" to
protect developers.    

 

The Council explained that community safeguards protected by Emeryville’s construction approval process need to be “streamlined” because “we are not building enough housing” and lowering the voter threshold for requiring taxpayers to foot the bill for public infrastructure improvements (coming as a result of private development) from the traditional 2/3rds to 55%, is OK because “it’s still democracy”.  

The protections the Council showed animosity towards come at the expense of decades of community activism at the local and state level through changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the Constitution of the State of California. 

The developer and tech funded housing lobbying group YIMBY backed the votes taken by the City Council, applauding Emeryville for what they characterized as being sufficiently “pro housing”. YIMBY has been criticized by many housing equity organizations state-wide for equating its hands off developers campaigning with a lowering of the price of housing as a false narrative.  

Affordable housing advocates refer to the YIMBY model as ‘trickle down housing’, recalling the Reagan era mantra of the discredited trickle down economics that was advertised as a way to buoy up the middle class.  The idea is government provides tax cuts to wealthy people and corporations and their extra wealth will trickle down to poor people as corporations re-invest in their businesses, hiring more and wealthy people hire more servants and they stimulate the economy with their increased purchasing power.  It is an idea Emeryville is doubling down on with Tuesday’s deregulation scheme.

Councilman Kalimah Priforce
The four other Emeryville City
Council members + Dianne 
Martinez are the "YIMBY 5".

Very revealing in the bills the Council voted on is a provision that developers will not have to provide as much affordable housing as they are now.  It is an irrational part of the trickle down idea: that being the notion that more affordable housing will end up being built if we remove requirements for building affordable housing.  Notably, the four supporting Council members didn't speak to that provision.  That plus the fact that developers, freed from government regulation requiring them to build ownership housing, will not build ownership housing.  Even before the Tuesday vote, Emeryville has morphed into a mostly rental city as Council member Priforce showed us on his website. 

Council members Courtney Welch, David Mourra and Sukhdeep Kaur all followed Mayor John Bauters’ lead with the votes but Councilman Kalimah Priforce was adamant this was not a way forward towards equitable growth.  Calling the four Council members plus newly appointed Planning Commissioner, the former City Councilwoman Dianne Martinez the “YIMBY Five”, Mr Priforce told the Tattler, “I want homeowners, renters, Community Based Organizations and City officials working together for an Emeryville free from developer control.  The YIMBY Five think they know better than what the people want.  I believe in placing the power back into the people’s hands so they can determine what true affordable housing is - not this trickle down housing.”